last night i went out and did some scouting/picture taking/listening to turkeys/just be out in the woods. i went out to sit in a field between 2 woods. on the way in i spooked a group of deer feeding in the field that i couldn't see until it was to late. then i sat down and waited after a while i started to head in. got about 50 yard and i spooked another group of deer coming into the field. while i was waiting for the deer to go back into the woods i heard turkeys gobbling behind me. i ran back to where i was sitting and 2 toms came out of the woods and gobbled in my face. a hen flew up in the woods then the gobblers flew up about 75 yards from me. i waited a while than started crawling away from them then more deer where in the field. i waited for them to pass then walked home i got around the field and scared a turkey of the roost in the other woods. i got home and found out that there was also 14 other deer in the field that i couldn't see from my spot.

just wanted to share my little story with you guys. with season 2 is just 7 days away i don't have to tell you that where i'm going to be opening day. i do have one ? will spooking deer scare the turkeys away too

If your out hunting the birds and they are on the ground or just about to fly down out of the roost and you spook some deer in their direction then yes! They can get spooked as well. Cause they will be aware that something spooked the deer. Now if the deer are just doing their own thing and moving along like normal then no, it won't spook the birds most likely. I've seen deer and turkey out in the same feild feeding together.

If it gobbles,runs on gas, or is married to you it will give you trouble!

All of the animals in the wild are in cahoots. They pay attention to each other's warnings and alarms...from crows, to squirrels, to deer to turkeys. Usually either they are all relaxed or all on alert.

We should all remind ourselves to slow down and observe more. Take a few steps and stop to look around for 20 to 30 seconds. It's amazing how much more game you'll see. This is called still hunting and commonly used by experienced deer hunters. I read where American Indian bowhunters would pause after every step and that each step and change of perspective allows you to see 33% of the woods that you could not see just a couple feet back.

An easy way to accomplish this is to pick out a landmark several hundred yards away and tell yourself that you will take 30 minutes to get there. Having said this, still hunting works much better for deer as turkeys will not tolerate any movement they pick up...but you can avoid bumping the deer. When turkey hunting, it's best to just get where you are going and sit down, just take your time getting there...sort of a combination of both, works for me.

Another aspect of alerting animals is the sound you make walking, the human cadence is quite unique. If you employ the still hunting method, you will sound much more like an animal moving through the woods than a man on a forced march. I like to scratch in the leaves with my feet every few steps to mimic feeding turkeys. Many times I've walked right up on deer and turkeys just over the next rise by employing this method.

Have a great season, Ben!

"The joy of living is his, who has the heart to demand it." Teddy Roosevelt

I have read before that if you are concerned about deer busting you that you should take with a bottle of cologne or as bad as it sounds a bottle of your own pee and circle the area where you are going to be hunting. That way the deer will smell this and stay away while the turkeys sense of smell is not very good and they will not even notice the pee/cologne smell. I think I read this in T&TH magazine a while back. Has anyone else used this or heard of this before? I would love to hear more experienced hunters chime in on this topic.

Sort of along the same lines that dewey was talking about...I have taken some clear scented stick-type deodorants and rubbed them on the trunks of trees around my hunting area a day or two before I intended to hunt. My brother-in-law works for a large personal care products manufacturer & I get damaged goods that can't be sold for free. The deer have a couple days warning to avoid the area and aren't likely to mess up your hunt by spooking turkeys off. You can also take scented deodorant soap and grate some up in the area and it will do the same thing. Soap is more obvious though.

I am also an avid deer hunter of 30 years. I also been feeding the deer here at my house for 15 years and even have a few that eat from my hand. I feel that since I take from somewhere, I also have to put back by giving the deer sanctuary here. It is the coolest thing to be able to walk among wild deer and study their habits (I also test buck lures to see what works & what doesn't). A few years ago, my neighbor (who didn't know I fed the deer...I don't advertize that around here) told me that his son-in-law had seen a big gang of deer going to my property & that the son-in-law was going to hunt them during Thanksgiving break. I was going to be out of the country then & didn't want anyone hunting the deer I had worked so hard to gain their trust. When the son-in-law hung a treestand about 6 inches from my property line, it put me over the edge. I got a bunch of stick deodorant, deodorant soap, and incense cones, I then pretty much covered every trail that came anywhere near that stand. It worked, the deer avoided that area like the plague and he didn't see a deer to take a shot at. If he was hunting where the deer were not so conditioned, I wouldn't have messed with him, deer aren't endangered by any means and their number need to be kept in check. But what he was thinking of doing would be like hunting songbirds over bird feeder hanging from a tree in my front yard & I won't tolerate it.

I'm going to attach a couple of pictures to give an idea of what I'm talking about. These are all still wild deer, to the point that if I'm across the creek in the woods rather than in my back yard, they run away from me with tails up. Over the years they have come to understand that nobody is going to mess with them here & there is food daily. In turn I get to learn their habits (which makes me a better hunter) and get to know some from the time they were in spots.

Thanks for posting the images, Cut N Run. They came out rather large, which is OK, but I wanted to address the "why are my images so huge" issue for the other users.

Users can upload images up to 2 megabytes in size. How large that displays on the screen depends on how the image is formatted. At low pixel densities, a 2 meg image will look huge. At high pixel densities, that same image will look small.

You can make your images appear smaller by reducing their density in a photo editing program, such as Photoshop.

But if you like the huge images, that's just as well. They won't go in my "To Delete" file.

I'm not certain what the situation is in NC, but we have urban/suburban deer population problems here in the Midwest. The topic of feeding these deer vs. hunting them stirs a lot of passion.

I like the idea of having a population to study, but just judging from the photo, the density of your herd, in close proximity to a populated area could present some long term problems. Maybe the son-in-law would be doing you a favor?

This would be a great conversation to carry on over on D&DH. Are you a member there?